Female mosquitoes rely on their "kidneys" (called Malpighian tubules) when consuming a human blood meal. They may ingest the equivalent of their body mass in blood, so they need to immediately get rid of the excess water and salt they consume. They achieve that by urinating on their host while they are still feeding.

As a result, Piermarini said, mosquitoes with impaired "kidney" function would be less likely to escape the human host and survive the ingestion of blood.

"With this important proof-of-concept study completed, our team is now in search of similar chemicals that will show a high potency for perturbing potassium channels in mosquitoes, but not those in humans and other animals," he said.

"If we can accomplish this goal, then we may uncover a new generation of insecticides for controlling 'resistant' mosquitoes and the spread of mosquito-borne diseases."

New methods for mosquito control are urgently needed, Piermarini said. Mosquitoes are becoming resistant to the insecticides currently used to combat the spread of diseases such as malaria, which kills close to 1 million people every year, and dengue, which infects hundreds of millions of people annually.

Piermarini's research is funded by a $1.4 million grant from the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health's "New Insecticides for Malaria Control" program, which is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.